The Power of Nightmares

Continuing with the Adam Curtis cavalcade of video, The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series; the films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. Take note of the role of Frantz Fannon. (Ilink; http://tinyurl.com/24nzrxr)

A reason for leaks.....?

The Rise and fall of Tee Vee Journalism........  Adam Curtis



link: http://tinyurl.com/3xrxx8y


A funny but sadly true update...
From Gawker

The Elephant In the Room

Article Review:

Richard Kim; The Nation

The Mad Tea Party

What makes a statement like the following plausible in America and not in the United Kingdom?

It was Cloward and Piven's article that gave ACORN the idea to start peddling subprime mortgages to poor minorities in the 1980s, knowingly laying the groundwork for a global economic meltdown nearly thirty years later.

The movement of the new right in America differs greatly from the resurgence of the new right in The United Kingdom.  While The Conservatives in England have molded the new Tory from Canadian, compassionate conservatism and American image crafting, the American conservatives have chosen a path of disinformation and fear.  The new Torys have also partnered with The Liberal Democratic party to form a collation government in England.  In stark contrast to their British colleagues, The Republican Party aligned with various Tea party organisations,  have returned to the “southern strategy” that was responsible for the defection of the Dixiecrats of years past.

The southern strategy was born under Nixon to recruit southern supporters of segregation. Disillusioned by the eras civil  rights acts Dixiecrats shifted republican. Republicans under Regan with his “welfare queens” quote  perfected its implementation and it continued to even haunt John MCcain in his GOP primary run against George W. Bush.

This article, helps to explain why race is still the elephant in the room in American politics.

link->

Post Update:

Glenn Beck Targets Frances Fox Piven

The Spin:

Glenn Beck 

Andrew Breitbart

American Thinker

Can you detect the coded language? 


How to use Cloward Piven to interpret current events and drudge up fears from the 1960's.  A thinly veiled Cloward Piven inspired rant.


Link

And now a Word from the BBC, perhaps..

The amazing Reggie Watts...

Adam Curtis The Century of the self

Adam Curtis on the Self.  The Century of the Self shows how psychoanalysis has shaped, corporations and Politics.  How to make one happy and thus docile...

James Baldwin

James Baldwin's words in this interview are applicable and relevant today as much as they were over 40 years ago.  He discusses critical consciousness, gentrification and identity.   

The Trap, Freedom

Adam Curtis is a writer and producer of compelling documentaries.  This series is called the Trap.  The trap that binds today is our post-modern concept of freedom.  He writes;

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

This series consists of three one-hour programmes which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically, "how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom."


This series can be found at The Internet Archive.  This is a truly interesting, critical and informative take on our western selves, enjoy..

The Black Elephant in the Room; Incarceration

Michelle Alexander and her book, The New Jim Crow exposes, the drug wars,  how the black  incarcerated population is a clear parallel to the American caste system. 
Get comfy and be ready to be disturbed.
Video:

Audio:
Incarceration As Social Control, an interview on KPFA 94.1 FM and KFCF 88.1 FM in Northern and Central California


Further food for thought:


The New Jim Crow | Mother Jones

TWIB is funny but if you have any questions, please read DuBois, Fanon or hooks instead.

The bell hooks critical conciousness review

bell hooks along with El Hajj Malik El Shabazz and my grandfather Ed Cooper are my cultural heroes.  They have sharpened my critical consciousness and instilled pride and humility.  In reading Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, I am astonished by the laissez faire attitude that many Americans employ in regards to consciousness and state of being.  bell hooks provides a gentle reminder of how perception and reality are often at odds with one another.

Sign -o-the times

Welcome back to the southern strategy. It worked for Nixon, Regan and Poppy Bush. Resurrect the Black demon, make them fearful and then justify their slaughter, remember the war on drugs (NWA the concept of gangsta,, boyz in da hood and menace to society? Awesome propaganda) 2 million people in jail, 70% African (many labour for free and do not have civil rights, Jim Crow anyone?). Prison in America is another thread we will investigate in later posts.


The southern stratagem.  Is that not Fox news' raison d'etre? Van Jones, ACORN, the new black panther party (all 3 members) do you see a pattern emerging? This tactic is strengthened by projection. Project your flaws onto another and accuse them of stated flaw in order to remove them from positions of power. The worst part is that the majority of Americans are so accustomed to accepting biases that support the American caste system projection is not recognized and identified, rather it is tacitly accepted. Case in point, American de facto segregation in public schools neighborhoods and in religious establishments.  D.W. Griffith's  film, Birth of a Nation, was the highest grossing silent film.  It is also seemingly, what people mean when they declare I want my country back.







(this is the movie in its entirety )







Further food for thought:
Justice Department - Black Panther | Video | Megyn Kelly | Mediaite

Further;
Fox News, the Black Panthers, and the same old pattern | Media Matters for America

Right-Wing Groups Use Decline of White Birthrates to Stoke Fear of Homosexuality, Feminism and Abortion | Belief | AlterNet

How Republicans inadvertently made the case for confirming Elena Kagan. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

Republicans Let Their Racism Show in Attack On Thurgood Marshall | Mirror On America

The Root: Playing The Race Card With Elena Kagan : NPR

The Elephants Tea Party

Why do so many posts seem to be centered on American social and cultural issues?  I live in the UK, I work here and I follow British politics.  Perhaps it is because race is the preverbal elephant in the room in America, while class is the pachyderm of choice in The United Kingdom.

Enough thinking out loud.  Follow me down the rabbit hole, and call me Bagger Vance cuz were talking Tea Party.  The laughable concept of using the Boston Tea Party as a symbolism for protesting high taxes and high costs is historically inaccurate.  In fact,


In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, which gave the English East India Company a chance to avert bankruptcy by granting a monopoly on the importation of tea into the colonies. The new regulations allowed the company to sell tea to the colonists at a low price, lower than the price of smuggled tea, even including the required duty. The British reasoned that the Americans would willingly pay the tax if they were able to pay a low price for the tea.


Ironically the original tea tax protest included a little red-face minstrel show when, 50 men, unconvincingly disguised as Mohawk Indians threw tea into the sea. But much like today, even then the British colonists (they were still English colonists) ignored the fact that costs and the tea tax were at their lowest levels." The Tea Act allowed the East India Company to skirt any middlemen and undersell their competitors, even undercutting smuggled tea. Parliament would not be able to resist such cheaply priced tea.  Today's baggers rant about high taxes are and make hyperbolic claims that subconsciously exploit race in a similar way that British colonists donned red faces in an attempted to scapegoat Mohawk Native Americans.


The Tea Party's blatant fixation with race is a national fixation with race.  There are very few cultural issues, economic and  political issues which encompass Tea Parties that do not subconsciously revolve around the pachyderm in the room.  This week Newsweek asked, Why Doesn't the Media Interrogate Tea Partiers' Beliefs?  Read the article and follow the trail to the University of Washington poll.  The poll authors state that the poll "examines what Americans think about the issues of race, public policy, national politics, and President Obama, one year after the inaugurationof the first African American president."  Do you see it yet, big tusks, floppy ears?  This poll caused quite a stir over at FiveThirtyEight.com.  


The poll results point toward strong racial and cultural bias held by many of the poll responders.  The Newsweek writer asks,


Might it be possible that the Tea Partiers who profess no racial motivation are, let's say, not entirely aware of their own visceral motivations? I'm sure if you asked the Southern voters who switched to Republican voting habits why they did so, many would say race had nothing to do with it. But why should journalists take that at face value?


Might it be possible that everyone subconsiously knows that racial animus is the muse for Tea Party discontent?  Might it be possible that we ignore the racial overtones of British colonists dressed in Mohawk Red-face with the same ease that we ignore the fact that racial bias infects even the poll questions that look to measure racism?  Check out one of the questions from the poll,

Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many  

other minorities overcame  

prejudice and worked their way  

up.  Blacks should do the same  

without special favors.  (Agree) 


Check out the original elephant in the room post for more....


The Elephant in the room

4th Annual Mixed Experience History Month

Nice historical view of light-skinded America and blackness.

Light-skinned-ed Girl

Check out Anatole Broyard, His granddaughter has some interesting work.

Her book looks as if it is an interesting perspective on the One Drop Rule.

We are respectable negroes: White Newborn Babies to be a Minority in the U.S. or Which "Racial" Group will Earn their Whiteness Next?

Ah, The definition of white. Remember back in the day? Classmates would ask, "what are you?" I would reply black, or black and native American. If they strove to be "middle class" their response to the same question would usually be, You're lucky,  I am just white. Not Irish, Italian, German etc. just white. Classmates who subconsciously identified as working class would usually respond with their ethnicity.  "I'm Irish or I'm Italian".  Some construct new racial categories, the best Americanism is, I'm Scotch-Irish".  There is no such thing as Scotch-Irish.  The Scottish call themselves Scottish.  Scotch is a drink.  Just white is the most sought after racial classification in the United States, and it does not exist in the world.


Back in the States some are fearful of the rising amounts of mud bloods: [follow link]
We are respectable negroes: White Newborn Babies to be a Minority in the U.S. or Which "Racial" Group will Earn their Whiteness Next?


In London the white label is usually designated by class.  The working class are dubbed "white working class".  This classification usually applies to White British, Irish, Welch and other "very British, Oy, Oy white working class" people.  The Middle classes are usually dubbed simply middle class.  Interestingly, the middle classes are usually proponents of multiculturalism.  Multiculturalism is very PC.


Note to Americans, middle class in England is not the same as middle class in America.  Middle class in America connotes a suburban lifestyle, marked by material possessions and zip code.  Middle class in England is hereditary, one may buy into it, but acceptance takes generations, proper schooling and diction.  The Tea Party and those that scream middle class loudest in America are not middle class.  Thus we have the vague classification of white.  White in America means non-ethnic, it means disregarding any ties to immigrant ancestors, so please note, we could be middle class.    


The fastest growing ethnic "minority" in England is the mixed race, classification.

The Independant:

A black and white issue: The future of society is mixed

The melting pot is bubbling nicely. 'Mixed race' is the UK's fastest-growing ethnic group. Are we ready for generation M? Amina Taylor, a black woman with a white partner, ponders what the future holds for her children

The BBC (Auntie):

Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, has called for all citizens to "assert a core of Britishness".http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3596047.stm


Further food for thought:


Right-Wing Groups Use Decline of White Birthrates to Stoke Fear of Homosexuality, Feminism and Abortion | Belief | AlterNet

Black Identity

I still have not quite worked out the subtle differences in Black Britain and Black America.  Generally I have noticed through discussions and observation that there is an admiration that Black Brits have for Black Americans, but generally speaking Black Americans do not share the cosmopolitan world view held by Black Brits.  Guardian writer Maxine Williams really nails it when she writes:

For many African-Americans, claiming the nation of their birth as their own has been critical in establishing strength and confidence in the face of centuries of subjugation. Thanks to American movements such as theHarlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s followed by the "black is beautiful" push of the 70s, we can all stand a little taller.

As island identities go, it is interesting that in the UK it is not uncommon to ask someone where they are from and to be told "Yard", a slang for Jamaica – and that is more than 60 years after the Empire Windrush brought the first West Indian immigrants to Britain. That is despite the fact that the person and their parents have been born in Britain, and have never seen the island they claim is so central to their sense of self.

In a "you're cool, but you do not get out much do you?" tone Maxine Williams throws a little shade on Michelle Obama in a Cif (Guardian Comment is Free section) article:

 My black, island identityWhen Michelle Obama poked fun at the authenticity of black people from islands I balked. But why does it matter?

TWIB NOTES

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